Know How... 44

Cameras 101

In today's episode, Leo explains the things you should know to get the most out of your digital camera.

Full shownotes to come, but here's a short version:
The three parameters we covered in today's episode were shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

Your shutter speed setting on your camera determines how long the shutter is open when you're taking pictures. It's displayed as a fraction of a second. If you're taking pictures of quick actions, you'll want that shutter to move quickly.

However, you're going to need a well lit subject if your shutter is open for a small amount of time. That's where aperture comes in. Aperture is the hole where light comes in. The larger your aperture, the more light is coming into the camera sensor. In camera lingo, aperture is delineated by "f-numbers" - the lens has a set of "f-stops" that you can set that f-number to.

So what's ISO then? ISO amplifies the image. The higher the ISO, the more noise you'll see in the image. A high ISO means that the camera can amplify the image a lot.

We touched upon the differences between RAW and JPEG shooting. JPEG might create smaller file sizes, but they are a lossy format. Once you take that picture, the only data you have is in that JPEG. RAW shooting keeps all the data the camera is seeing. That leads to much larger file sizes, but you can go in and change a multitude of factors after the fact.

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